In praise of... cash presents

Face it: gifts mark the point where sincere duty meets blind panic. Whatever Olympian ideals the buyer starts with - of giving something improving, or at least appreciated - they eventually dissolve into a compromise purchase and a shuffle to the tailback at the cash tills. A lot of that effort is wasted. The economist Joel Waldfogel found that the typical $50 present was valued by recipients at between $35 and $43. Gifts from faraway grandparents and aunties fared even worse (the research was entitled, rather touchingly, The Deadweight Loss of Christmas). Admittedly, this was setting aside sentimental value; but even if it is the thought that counts, it is asking rather a lot of the poor old thought to make up nearly a third of the value of a present. But the biggest compromise is surely the gift voucher, which needlessly converts hard currency into funny money. "I know I should give you something," says the voucher. "But I don't what." It is a sigh in paper form. The least useful are the most specific: those for single shops selling a narrow range of goods. The most useful are for chains selling a variety of stuff - or something generic, like book tokens. But these are the best examples of a bad job. In the transition from giver to receiver, the present that best keeps its face value, and therefore the most economically efficient is, obviously, cash. Giving money is considered bad form, but at least it will be spent on something the recipient actually wants. And isn't that meant to be the point?